1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a refrigerator and a door opening apparatus thereof, and more particularly to a refrigerator and a door opening apparatus thereof, in which a user opens a door with weak force, and has a good tactile feeling when opening the door.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a refrigerator is designed to supply cold air generated from an evaporator during a refrigeration cycle to a storeroom to allow freshness of various foodstuffs to be preserved for a long time. This storeroom is opened and closed by a door, an inner edge of which is provided with a gasket in which a magnet is mounted, to maintain airtightness of the storeroom when the door is shut.
When the refrigerator is operated in the state where the door is shut, the air in the storeroom is cooled by heat-exchanging with the evaporator. As the air in the storeroom is cooled and condensed, the pressure of the storeroom becomes lower than the atmospheric pressure. In this state, when a user intends to open the door, the user has difficulty in opening the door because the door is pulled with a force greater than just a binding force of the magnet mounted in the gasket and force due to a pressure difference between the outside and the inside of the storeroom. Furthermore, the refrigerator has recently become large, and thus the door has become heavy. Hence, stronger force is required to open the door.
To solve this problem, the applicant of this invention has devised a door handle apparatus for a refrigerator, capable of easily opening a refrigerator door, and has been endowed with Korean Patent Application No. 10-1999-0037523. Here, when a user pulls a handle bar of the door handle apparatus, an operating lever rotates together to push the front surface of a cabinet, and then a gasket, which is attached to a rear surface of the door and is adjacent to the operating lever, is separated from the front surface of the cabinet, so that a gap is generated. The external air flows into the storeroom through this gap, so that the door is easily opened.
This opening operation of the door will be described in greater detail with reference to FIG. 1.
As illustrated in FIG. 1, to rotate the door from the cabinet, the force of the user pulling the door must be gradually increased. As the force of the user pulling the door is gradually increased, the gasket having flexibility is expanded. The moment the force of the user pulling the door reaches a peak (point A), the gasket is separated from the cabinet.
But no force acts between the door and the cabinet from moment the gasket is separated from the cabinet. As such, the door is abruptly open but not smoothly from this time. Therefore, the user's tactile feeling may not be as pleasurable as desired when opening the door.